It's odd, isn't it. I've never had dataloss with FAT, but it occurs far too often with NTFS. And it's not my drives or anything, as those get regularly checked.

By the way, "far too often" is once every so many weeks. Any dataloss is too often in my book.

I use NTFS for my O/S partition and data/data back-up partitions ( 1x47Gb and 3x29Gb). I use FAT32 for my back-up partitions (1x124Gb and 1x210Gb) which have my Drive Image files. That's because I've had problems before restoring from NTFS partitions using Drive Image. It kept telling me I didn't have permission to access the files...

Here it is from the Horses Mouth, so to speak.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/fileio/base/ntfs.asp
MSDN NTFS Link
"Data recoverability. NTFS limits the possibility of data corruption by organizing I/O operations by transactions. Transactions are atomic, which means that either the entire I/O operation must complete or none of it can complete. If anything interrupts the transaction in-progress, such as loss of power to the computer or a cancellation of the I/O operation, NTFS does everything possible to guarantee that any changes made to the file system as part of the I/O operation are undone, or rolled back, returning the file system to its condition before the I/O operation began."

Depends on what format the partitions were/are....NTFS, etc......Best bet is to get a competent Partitioning tool...one that handles all formats.

Win update can tell if you have the drivers already....probably through cookies...have a go at deleting them and see if it 'sees' the need for a new driver DL.

It might be coded into the registry, however...

Oh. I fornd the partition problem.

There was three partitions on the drive. the first time I only deleted two thinking that the space would combine with the third when I reformated it. "wrong"

I had to delete all three partitions to completely remove partitions and make for one unpartioned space before I reformated.

Works fine now. And Jafo thanks again for the lite step links. When Im done with my friends PC im going to give it another shot. cross your fingers.

Chas...I think there's memory 'limiters' available for running 98 with too much system ram.....have a look through 'Shell City' or try Google....

I had mandrake linux 9.2 installed on a second harddrive and i could read my NTFS xp disk with no problems

Chas....there are Dos proggies that can read NTFS....so Win98 won't be a problem either....[just inconvenient]...

Chas....no, the OS must be on Fat/Fat32.....but a drive formatted in NTFS can be read by it.  Originally it was a one-way compatibility thing.....XP/NTFS could 'see' all that went before it, but not the other way round....

I have a dual boot system. My bios lets me choose which hard drive I want to boot from. My largest drive 120g is my NTFS partition. It is an eide drive and is configuared for cable select. I have that divided into XP partition(windows os) and a second partition to store documents and music etc in case XP crashes and needs reinstalled(so far I have never had to yet even after 2years). So That is drives C:\ and E:\ in NTFS. My second hard drive is smaller 20g and was from my old computer. That is in Fat32 and has my Win98 os on it. I use that one for games and other older applications that cannot play nice with XP . Especially dos games. That drive also has the jumper settings placed for cable select, and is on the same ide cable. I placed them on the cable for the master/slave configuration (XP master and 98 slave. That way if XP will boot up by default if I don't choose something.

NTFS is very stable with XP. I can see both drives with NTFS and Xp. That way I can back up documents etc to that drive as an extra backup.

When I boot to Win98, (Using my bios and selecting that hard drive to boot to)it only sees that drive that has the Win 98 os.

NTFS is the most stable, if you completely change the drive to NTFS format then install XP.

I hope that gives you info. Oh...The other piece of info is that NTFS works best on Hard drives that are bigger than 80g. If yours is smaller, than I would not change it. You would not see any benefit from it.

FAT32 or NTFS, it´s a big difference
Here´s a link to Microsoft´s infohttp://www.microsoft.com/WINDOWSXP/home/using/productdoc/en/choosing_between_NTFS_FAT_and_FAT32.asp?frame=true

Good SP2 installation procedure, Ladysarajane. Less people would probably have problems if they followed that procedure.

Ladysarajane - A motherboard with Dual Channel memory might help. It has in my situation. I have 512 megs as well.